The Perfect Stroke (51 page)

“They’re not innocent, Ana. They’re felons. Scum of the earth that are supplying drugs to—”

“They are human beings and one of them had a wife and a mother. Last I checked, our job was to protect and serve, not kill and leave lying and shrug it off.”

“If you’re done being on your high horse, I don’t have much time here.”

My stomach churns with the look on Paul’s face. Why had I never noticed this side of him before? Something about his whole attitude makes me feel like my skin is crawling. Something is just…
off.

“Say it,” I tell him, just wanting him to leave. He hands me a small packet of white powder. I look at it like it’s a snake, one that’s about to bite me and pump my body full of poison. “What the fuck is this?”

“Coke.”

I blanch, physically jarred from his answer, even if I knew what it was. “Why are you giving this to me?” I whisper, that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach only getting worse.

“You need to plant that on Anthes.”

“Plant? What are you talking about?”

“The fucking weasel keeps covering his tracks and he slips through every fucking trap we set. We get him on possession, he’ll get out, but it will give us all the ammo we need to get a judge to give the okay to take a fine-tooth comb to his businesses and anything else. It will give us time to sweep in and tear apart his business piece by piece.”

“Paul, that’s … what you’re asking me to do …”

“Before you go all moral, that’s just enough to cap him for possession. It’s enough to get our fucking foot in the door. It will save your brother. The quicker we get Anthes locked up, the quicker we can find your brother.”

“But…” I try and argue, but my tongue feeling too heavy for my mouth and refuses to form words. My heart is beating erratically and I am about two steps away from a panic attack.

“Your brother is running out of time, Ana. Do you really want to be the reason for his death?” he asks, then motions to the guy with him. They leave me standing there looking like I was just in a train wreck and holding an eight ball of coke and wondering how the fuck I got here.

I jerk awake in bed and reaching for the pistol I keep under my pillow. I grab the butt of the grip, wrapping my fingers around it, when a large hand clamps down making it so I can’t move.

“Jesus Christ, Ana. You keep a gun under your fucking pillow?”

I go deathly still in the dark of my bedroom. “Roman?”

“Who the fuck else would it be getting into your bed at three in the morning?” he asks, taking the gun away from me and placing it on my nightstand.

That’s a good question.
“Roman? How are you in my bed? You don’t have a key. You gave me a heart attack!”

“I could tell by the way you were about to shoot me. Motherfucker, what the hell has happened to you in the past that you sleep with a gun under your pillow?”

That’s a question I’m not about to answer. “Will you tell me how you got in?” I ask instead, my eyes following his body and enjoying the view. Roman is probably the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life. Roman without a shirt is deadly. He might be covered up too, but shivers run through me when I realize he’s probably completely naked and in my bed.

“Pet, you’ll find there’s not much I can’t do when I want it. And I think we’ve established that I want you. Now let’s get back to the question at hand. Why do you sleep with a gun under your pillow?” he asks, and I try to ignore the distraction of a naked Roman to concentrate on our conversation.

“I’m a single woman alone in the city,” I compromise. It sounds plausible?
Right?

“If I get my hands on your brother, I may choke the life out of him for leaving you in the position where you think you need a gun to protect yourself.”

I listen to him and there’s a lot to think about in that one sentence. Most of all, it sounds like he hasn’t killed my brother. Maybe it’s not him that has Allen at all.
Could the informant have been wrong?
On the heels of that thought is the warm feeling I get inside at the fact that Roman is concerned about me. No one ever has been, except Paul … and now I wonder if he ever really was. If we had the relationship I thought we had, would he have put me in the situation I am in right now? The Paul I had created in my mind would have never done anything underhanded.

I push thoughts of Paul out of my head. I can’t deal with that right now. I have the coke locked in a firebox under my bed. Fuck if I know what I’m going to do. As I look at Roman now and see how tired and upset he looks, pain squeezes my heart.

“You had a bad night,” I tell him. It’s not a question; the truth of it is written all over his face.

“Yeah, pet. It was a bad night.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s a reason I don’t do relationships, Ana. You get what I do, everything I am. It’s not a normal nine-to-five, nor is it what most people could accept. I have my own laws, my own code…”

“Roman, everyone has the same laws.”

“No, pet. They don’t. But it doesn’t concern you.”

“If we’re dating…”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Whatever we’re doing, we seem to be heading in a direction where—”

“Where we’re going to fuck over and over?”

I smile, despite the gravity of the situation facing me. I feel like a fraud, even as a larger part of me wants to believe that I’m having this conversation because somehow I’ll get to keep Roman.
I think I really want to keep him.

“Freak. I was going to say it looks like we may be spending more time together.”

“Oh yeah, definitely spending more time together.”

I shake my head at him. “Roman, I’m serious. If we keep seeing each other, your life and choices will affect me. Don’t you think I need to know more? To prepare myself, if nothing else?”

“We’re definitely going to keep seeing each other, Ana,” he says, cupping the side of my face. He seems to do that a lot, and I’m not going to lie. Every time he does, a small piece of the distance I try to keep between us chips away. “And nothing I do will ever touch you, pet. I’m starting to realize you aren’t used to having a real man in your life, but you’re mine,” he says and the words vibrate through in a way that causes every single female part inside of me to clench in pleasure.
Can you orgasm without any kind of sex?
“I’ve claimed you and I will protect you from everything, including myself. Nothing will touch you.”

Wow.
If only he could, but he can’t. He has no idea who I am, and he thinks I don’t know anything about him. Our relationship, or whatever this is, has all been built on a house of cards and I’m the dealer. What will Roman do when he finds out he’s being played?

I bring my hand up to cover his and pull it to my lips to kiss his palm. “It’s too late to be having this type of conversation and you look worn out. Let’s get some rest and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow,” I urge him. I really can’t handle any more heart-to-heart tonight.

“Ana, I’ve been wanting you under me all night. If you think I’m going to be satisfied with just sleep, you’re dreaming.”

“Noted. But first, we need to make you less tense.”

“Sex does that.”

“So does a backrub.”

“A backrub?”

“You sound doubtful, but these hands,” I tell him, holding my hands up and cracking my knuckles. “
These hands
are miracle workers.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Completely. Now lay down on your stomach,” I order him, getting up from the bed to grab a bottle of lotion. I make note to go shopping tomorrow to get some massage oil, preferably heated. It wasn’t something I foresaw me needing before now. I go to the dresser, finding the lotion. I stop before I make it back to the bed. Roman is lying on his stomach, his head turned to watch me. He has the strangest look on his face. “What?” I ask, wondering if I’ve given myself away. Could I have pushed too much?
Does he suspect something?

“Pet, are those … unicorns with rainbows coming out of their ass … on your pajamas?”

“Um … maybe?”

He keeps staring at me, and I’m blushing like crazy. I don’t need to see my face to know I am.

“Have I mentioned how you might be the first woman to surprise me? And you seem to do it constantly.”  He means that as compliment, I know he does, but the guilt that swamps me makes it impossible to respond. Instead, I clear my throat and try to offer a weak smile. I place some lotion on my hands and rub them together to warm up the cold cream, then I start working it into his lower back. Carefully, I make my way up his back, applying pressure on the tense muscles beneath. “That feels so good, pet. You might be magic.”

“Told you,” I whisper, my heart feeling heavy as I’m swamped with so many different emotions that I’m having trouble functioning. We continue like that for a few more minutes until I finally gather up the courage to ask Roman a question that I really need the answer to. “Roman? What happened to the men you were talking about earlier? How did they die?”

Silence answers me. Did I push him to open up too soon?

“Roman?” I ask again, and there’s a soft snore following my words. I look down and Roman is definitely sleeping. Guess my hands worked too well.

Disappointment swamps me. I didn’t have a lot of expectations, but I was hoping to learn more about Roman because I need to trust and believe in him. The truth is, no matter how much I try to explain it away, Roman matters.

He matters a lot.

Apparently life with Ana is going to be a constant surprise. Never have I passed out on a woman. Yet with Ana, I did easily. I reach over for her, determined to have her finally. My hand finds nothing but her pillow and it’s cold. I sit up, stretching, and let my eyes get adjusted to the darkness in the room. There’s minimal light coming through the window. The clock tells me it’s a little after six in the morning. The apartment is quiet; no obvious sounds telling me where she’s at.

“Ana, where the hell are you?” I growl, grabbing my pants and putting them on before looking through the apartment for her. Each room comes up empty until it’s apparent she’s nowhere to be found. I’m about to tear from her place to search for her when I look through the glass doors that lead out to her balcony. Ana is sitting in a lounge chair wrapped up in a blanket and looking out over the sunrise. “I’m going to start tying you to the bed so I stop waking up alone. What are you doing out here?”